DNA Chip Will Plug Into Handsets

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- After claiming in March it brought the cost of sequencing a human genome to $1,000, Illumina Inc. has set its sights on a consumer product. The company aims to deliver a chip that plugs into a smartphone, bringing genetic medicine to the individual.

The smartphone will become "a molecular stethoscope," said Mostafa Ronaghi, Illumina's chief technology officer, speaking at the Imec Tech Forum here. "We will not need a primary doctor in the future, you will get tested [at home or in a clinic] and go directly to a specialist -- I believe it will happen in five to seven years," Ronaghi predicted.

Researchers at Illumina are already working on pieces of the solution. Finding biocompatible interfaces between "wet and dry science" is one of the biggest challenges, he said, noting some applications require as much as 10 milliliters of blood.

Separately, the team is still evaluating electrical, optical, and other means for on-chip genomic detection. Extracting and processing genomic data can take as many as 30 steps, he said.

So far, Illumina has demonstrated digital microfluidics on silicon with the help of researchers from the CEA-Leti. Illumina hopes to launch in July devices that can assay as many as 16 samples in silicon, using technology it acquired, he added.

Another issue is handling cloud connectivity given some uses generate as much as a 100 Gbytes of data. Some researchers are basing efforts on proteins -- which would generate much more data -- but Ronaghi believes most work will focus on nucleic acids. "We are focused on genomics and feel most questions can be answered by genomics," he said.

Costs of sequencing the human genome plummeted from $100 million at the turn of the century to $1M in 2008 to $1,000 in March 2014, according to Illumina.

Although it's still early days for genomics, costs and lives are being saved applying the technology to cancer treatments and pregnancy care, he said. Today about $12 billion of the estimated $20 genomics industry is in oncology, he said. The next biggest slice is $5 billion in systems for researchers, followed by a rapidly growing $2 billion segment in reproductive health and $1 billion in other emerging applications.

Illumina is one of the leaders in genomics, said an Imec researcher following the field. In its last financial quarter, the company generated $421 million in revenues and $60 million in profits for sales of its family of sequencing systems.

thank you @GroovyGeek...I need to read up on sequencing vs genotyping, at the moment I don't understand the difference...I thought 23andme will tell me what is my most important sub-set of genes and then I will know how quickly might get Alzheimer for example (what I am going to do with that information that is another story, buy a gun to kill myself when the time comes? or that will be too late as I will forget how to use it)

I agree that some form of DNA analysis with a help from smartphone could be used by medical personel in case of outbreaks as in your example...I don't see people using it personally, I think that will create a chaos of unbelievable proportions

Can't sequence for a few hundred $ - 23andme is not sequencing, it is genotyping, slightly more sophisticated than the other popular perception of what DNA sequencing is (CSI Miami style), but still a far cry from whole genome sequencing (or even whole exome). Why you way want a highly portable sequencer? There is a lot more to sequence than humans themselves which affects humans. Look up "microbiome" for example. When your hospital has an infection outbreak knowing what bug is causing it "here and now" can be invaluable rather than sending out a sample to a lab and waiting a few days to get an answer. Tracing down the source of an infectious disease with near certainty in near real time can also be valuable (this was used on the Haitian cholera a few years ago to determine the viral strain and its origination point). The article left the impression that everyone would carry a cell phone that can do sequencing. I don't think this was the intent, but we can let the author clarify for himself.

I am equally puzzled...why would I want to sequence my DNA using my smart phone?...if I really want to do it I can take a sample and send it to one of these companies that can do it for few hundreds dollars...presumably my DNA doesn't change on a daily basis ;-)

Can we not have the genomic sequence of a person stored in a central data base and linked with that person's socila security number?

In that case the geneomic sequnces of the whole worlds population could be in a central repository which can be accessed by any doctor anywahere in the world and will help diagnose a health problem the person may be facing.

Why such a crucial information in a handset which are vulnerabel for damage, loss, theft ?

Healthy skepticism but for the wrong reasons. Sequencing is not just for chronic diseases http://www.genomeweb.com/clinical-genomics/next-generation-sequencing-pipeline-finds-cause-critically-ill-boys-disease

When most medical visits are due to chronic disease management, what new genetic information does the body create along different "phases" of a chronic disease(unless it's cancer) ? How can genomics be the solution here ?